Thursday, July 12, 2007

Wow! The normally reasonable Josh Marshall sounds so shrill as he talks about Republican Senators rash of recent filibusters.

If anything it's worse than this as Senate Republicans have been filibustering just about everything. Everything on Iraq certainly. And this is the sense of 'filibuster' as it has been used more or less continuously for a decade.

The Dems are idiots on this. Reporters should note it, yes. But it's not really their job.

In the larger sense this is something that worries me in the abstract and I think Democratic Senators are really going to get a handle on for the future of the country and if we hope to get anything done legislatively after the next election.

Most political analysts see real opportunities for the Democrats to pick up as many as eight seats in the Senate in 2008. This would put the Democrats at, what, 58/ 59 Senators? Not enough for cloture.

So we could be facing a situation where we have a Democratic President, a solidly Democratic House and Senate and still aren't able to get a damn thing passed because Democratic Senators haven't got the balls to to stand up to the radical Senators in the Republican party.

Democratic leaders need to get a handle on this now. First step: force real filibusters on these issues and draw the jerks into the public spotlight.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Harry Reid's comments yesterday that there would remain thousands of troops in Iraq even after a withdrawal should not lead to all the gnashing of the teeth among progressives that it has.

The important thing is we begin pulling out troops as soon as possible. We can begin to cut deployments and rebuild our weakened military after that gets underway.

More importantly I have no doubt that there will come a point after we've withdrawn a majority of our troops when it will become politically impossible for us to keep any force in Iraq for long after. Events on the ground will accelerate and even under the best case scenario for resolution - a stable coalition government in Iraq - we will be asked to leave.

I want our troops out. The sooner the better. Nothing Reid said plays against that desire.

Monday, July 09, 2007

I'm not sure I see the point to this unless it's the Pope's goal to drive even more of us away from the Catholic church.

ROME, July 7 — Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday authorized a wider use of the old Latin Mass, dismissing fears that its revival could divide the church or dilute the reforms of the Second Vatican Council that made standard worship in the languages of Catholics around the world.

In gentle but firm language, the pope acknowledged in an accompanying letter to bishops the depth of opposition to the change, voiced in recent months by European bishops and Jewish groups. He proposed, in fact, a review after three years to determine “if truly serious difficulties come to light.”

He's not diluting the Second Vatican Council. He's making it "better."

But the pope said that the change could both heal rifts with traditionalist groups that favor the Latin Mass as well as reconnect the church with a 1,500-year-old form of worship that faded since the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965.

Rigggghhht. Because the Catholics that have fallen away that the church needs to bring back into the fold are the Mel Gibson/ Opus Dei/ Traditionalist nutjob variety and not the millions of other Catholics worldwide who've been dispossessed by a church increasingly more concerned with tradition rather than living the gospel.

Jackass.

**For those of you unfamiliar with the quote it's from one of the greatest, most subversive cartoons ever - "Invader Zim." Here's the context - Zim, who is entirely insane, has just un-banished himself from the planet "Foodcourtia" to join his fellow alien invaders in Operation Impending Doom 2. Operation Impending Doom 1 met utter failure when Zim went crazy on the invader's own planet and set most of the capitol on fire.